Edward Snowden on Bitcoin: “Bitcoin By Itself is Flawed”

[OmegaStarScream]

In an interview at The Internet Engineering Task Force 93, former CIA employee and NSA contractor Edward Snowden spoke about privacy and security. Interestingly, Snowden focused his talk on Bitcoin and its flaws and weaknesses.

Snowden began by briefly introducing the 51% attack concept, and stated that the Bitcoin network could be vulnerable to attacks and manipulation if “a pool has over 50% of the computing power to demonstrate adequate proof of work to add entries to the blockchain ledger.”

Snowden commented :

“Obviously, Bitcoin by itself is flawed. The protocol has a lot of weaknesses and transaction sides and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth.”

Full article on CoinTelegraph right here : http://cointelegraph.com/news/115133/edward-snowden-on-bitcoin-bitcoin-by-itself-is-flawed
and here is the Github link for the Interview : https://gist.github.com/mnot/382aca0b23b6bf082116#bitcoin

What are your thoughts on his opinion guys If you read more the article you will see that DASH has been mentioned few times , we all know how much he care about privacy .

[Falconer]

Snowden is a good guy imo. He left CIA because it have crossed the line of people privacy. His opinion about bitcoin sounds that he is interested with bitcoin, and I think the bitcoin developer should contact him about that. Maybe he could discuss it more detail about that and would fix that 'flaw'.

[SebastianJu]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

[tsoPANos]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

Snowden is ignorant of bitcoin.
There are better ways to harm bitcoin than do a 51% attack and bitcoin has much more serious problems like scalability.
It will take some time, but eventually he will transform his opinion as he is a tech savvy person. He is not that far from that...

[SebastianJu]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

Snowden is ignorant of bitcoin.
There are better ways to harm bitcoin than do a 51% attack and bitcoin has much more serious problems like scalability.
It will take some time, but eventually he will transform his opinion as he is a tech savvy person. He is not that far from that...

Especially when you think about that he is hated by secret agencies. He might have trouble getting donations or moving money. Bitcoin would be his solution then.

I think at one point he will look into it more thoroughly. Maybe a bitcoiner already explained him that his fears are not really funded?

[S4VV4S]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

Snowden is ignorant of bitcoin.
There are better ways to harm bitcoin than do a 51% attack and bitcoin has much more serious problems like scalability.
It will take some time, but eventually he will transform his opinion as he is a tech savvy person. He is not that far from that...

Especially when you think about that he is hated by secret agencies. He might have trouble getting donations or moving money. Bitcoin would be his solution then.

I think at one point he will look into it more thoroughly. Maybe a bitcoiner already explained him that his fears are not really funded?

I am pretty sure that he does not understand Bitcoin completely.
His response on the matter was rather vague.

[kelsey]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

Snowden is ignorant of bitcoin.
There are better ways to harm bitcoin than do a 51% attack and bitcoin has much more serious problems like scalability.
It will take some time, but eventually he will transform his opinion as he is a tech savvy person. He is not that far from that...

yes no need to destroy btc tis doing a fine job on its own 

[S4VV4S]

He is right but obviously he did not think it through since when someone does a >50% attack then he would need to sell the illegally won bitcoins. Who will buy them fast enough to make the attack worth it?

Only other thing is to destroy bitcoin. That could be easily done by probably any secret agency. Hacking pools and big miners and do 51% attack. Bitcoin would be done.

The question is who would do this for what reason?

Snowden is ignorant of bitcoin.
There are better ways to harm bitcoin than do a 51% attack and bitcoin has much more serious problems like scalability.
It will take some time, but eventually he will transform his opinion as he is a tech savvy person. He is not that far from that...

yes no need to destroy btc tis doing a fine job on its own 

Sad, but true....

[Lituation]

I read that interview. I think his words show his lack of knowledge. %51 attack is discussed a lot and it's not a serious flaw.
I think he will change his mind if he reads more about this technology.